A choral difficulty supporting the concept of harmonic functions
I held a rehearsal with our choir yesterday—Delibes, Messe brève, Gloria, in the SATB arrangement of AnnaMaria Hedin. Two alto singers—otherwise very capable and confident in finding (and leading others to) the right notes—did not hit a certain G, even when singing alone, without the "noise" of the other voices: Instead of G in m.139, they absolutely wanted to jump to the red E (or something like that, about a third lower than G). Not even the fact that G is just a semitone below the previous G♯, mirroring the semitone step from A to G♯, helped them: For me, this supports the concept of a functional experience of music: The E major triad in mm.137+138 is the dominant of A minor; the G in m.139 is a (rudimentary) dominant of the—abruptly returning—key of C major. Thus, the alto first sings the third of the dominant of A minor; and then the root of the dominant of C major. But if the singers do not consciously include the modulation in their mental mode...